Did Petraeus have to resign?

n Business Insider, former servicemen Robert Johnson and Geoffrey Ingersoll explain why an extramarital relationship might be a fire-able offense for an individual with the highest level of security clearance:

Anyone applying for a Top Secret for Sensitive Compartmentalized Information (TSSCI) clearance would be denied for simply having any outstanding debt. Something as simple as a DUI or alcohol problem can endanger passing a Secret Clearance review, which is one lower than TSSCI (also referred to as a ‘need-to-know’).

Had a foreign agent found out Petraeus was involved in an extramarital affair, the resulting leverage could have been astounding.

4. He did the right thing. He was to set an example. If he breaks the rules then the people below

5. Just the question alone answers itself.

If you have to ask whether the head of the CIA had to resign, then he had to resign. I know humans make mistakes but there are some positions, like the director of the CIA, that needs to be above reproach. You can't put yourself in a position where your trustworthiness can ever be questioned.

The whole reason this is happening is there have been leaks coming from within the WH admin. So Holder has had two attorney's investigating the leaks since June, I think. I'm guessing the investigation led to Patraeus' resignation.

9. I feel the same

This is less about the affair and more about the FBI investigation. After a long career, he gets brought down by a beautiful women. The CIA is different than the army. Maybe she was just using him to get access to his computer. He should of been smart enough not to get into such a situation. Even if it is nothing but just looks bad. He's now losing his career over it, bad judgement is right

6. I disagree on the Security Clearance

I have had friends that kept their Secret or Top Secret Clearance even with a DUI, and as long as debts are current, or you have something in your file explaining if and why you fell behind. IIRC, I don't even recall a question about extra-martial affairs, just if you are in contact with folks who are foreign nationals...

16. I'm with you .....

I held a TS/SCI for many years, and worked with many others that held it. You can have debt, convictions, affairs, and most other human issues, as long as you fully disclose them to your SSO. Woe be onto you if you try to hide something. (I even married a Nationalist Chinese national and kept my clearance, after she and her family passed the complete background investigation.)

And TS/SCI does not mean "need to know." The Top Secret is a level of classification. Sensitive Compartmented Information is more of a catgory of access, though you must have a need to know to get access to the various compartments. Wiki has a good article on SCI.

18. Exactly..plus most access to miitary laptops

22. My friend's ex-husband held a pretty high-level clearance

He was a cryptologist with NSA, who has since retired. When he was married to my friend, her health problems became steadily worse to the point where sex became difficult for her. So, he found his jollies elsewhere - namely, on the Internet. Yep, he cheated on his wife with a woman that he met on-line. Then, about two days after he moved out (and giving her a Dear Jane Letter), the security guy came to do his 5-year reinvestigation. Boy, did THAT investigator get an earful! The upshot was that she said that, yeah, he was a lying douchebag, but he was really good at keeping secrets because he kept his affair from her for six months.

Lying douchebag retained his clearance for another five years, up until the time he retired from NSA, moved his Internet honey (now wife) out of state, and is basically doing nothing.

14. There's more to this story than what we're hearing in the MSM...tip of the iceberg. nt.

15. Agree. I have a feeling she received access to classified information.

Either provided by the General, or taken from him via the inappropriate access he gave her. Why did the FBI hone in on his gmail account? What was this "irregular activity" they were concerned abot?

Otherwise, there's not a clear cause for resignation once the affair is made public (i.e. the affair is no longer fodder for blackmailers). Unless, of course, it's just the fact of who he had the affair with (a woman he had allowed privileged access for many years). The questions of what he may have told her over the years would have lingered.

31. Apparently, the biographer was harrassing ANOTHER woman who was close to the General.

(CNN) -- The affair that brought an end to David Petraeus' tenure as CIA director came to light during an FBI investigation into a complaint that his biographer Paula Broadwell was sending harassing e-mails to another woman close to him, a U.S. official said Saturday.During the investigation, other communications surfaced between Petraeus and Broadwell, a married mother of two, according to the official.
The official did not identify the woman who made the initial complaint and did not know the nature of her relationship with Petraeus.

Who was the "woman close to him?" A co-worker? Another paramour? His WIFE, maybe? Who knows?

21. He would have already had as high a clearance as you could get

Just by being commanding General in Iraq, or at least CENTCOM. Not to mention CIA director. And, if the intelligence community fired everyone who'd cheated on their spouse, it would have nobody but the uber-nerds who never got laid to do the work. I'm betting that, as a journalist, she knew all kinds of dirt on him and was blackmailing him.

23. Good riddance. But, it is for a rather silly reason.

America's adolescent and schizophrenic obsession with the sexual antics of celebrities leads to these sort of things. Bill Clinton's, and JFK's, affairs were far more dangerous under the rubric of "Screwing around could lead to blackmail by the bogeymen".

29. Certain issues will get your clearance pulled.

Simply having debt is not a deal breaker. Having loans outstanding to bookies and loan sharks is another matter. Having your brother-in-law sell some guns to people he thinks are the IRA but are actually the FBI is a much bigger no-no.

Basically, there are three levels of classified access: confidential, secret and top secret. Certain types of work require different types of access. Sensitive compartmented information generally deals with a specific topics or areas of the world. Certain data from the testing of classified devices or economic data may be in this category. Access to cryptographic and communications security data and devices has its own access restrictions.

Each site or unit (military or civilian) that handles classified data has a chief security officer. That person is charged with assuring compliance will all procedures related to the handling of classified information. The agency that does the investigation to clear the individual will generally review new information from time to time and revisit some aspects of the clearance process. There are different clearance processes as well. Single scope background investigation is required for those under consideration for top secret clearance. Those that work directly with the President will undergo the yankee white process.

For more particular info, look up executive order #12968 from President Clinton.

More likely than having clearance approval issues, the General's superiors will be concerned about his reliability, potential for causing embarassment and general trustworthiness. That could get anyone fired, even the cashier at McDonald's.